When Youssef Hossam received a lifetime ban from tennis two-and-a-half years ago for committing match-fixing offences, the Egyptian suffered an “identity crisis” as he struggled to find purpose in life.
After being a top 10-ranked junior in the world, and a top-300 player on the ATP tour before the age of 20, Hossam’s shot at a career in professional tennis was ruined and his ties to the sport were reduced to coaching local children back home in Cairo.
Little did he know that a couple of years later he would get a second chance at a pro career in sports, this time in padel, where he is starting to make a name for himself and is representing Egypt in the ongoing world championships taking place in Dubai this week.
“When I got banned from tennis, I had two or three years where I had an identity crisis,” Hossam told Arab News last week, on the sidelines of the Premier Padel tournament in Cairo.
“I moved on and I worked in tennis as a coach and I started having good players that were winning.
“I tried boxing locally and I won one amateur fight. It really was an identity crisis.
“Of course when padel appeared, I felt like this was something I could pursue full-time professionally and to work and get back to the kind of life I’ve always been used to, the only life I know how to live on a professional level. So I took it as a second chance.”
Finding a purpose
Hossam was provisionally suspended from tennis in July 2019 pending an investigation and learned his final fate in March 2020.
“The toughest thing in those two years (after my suspension) was the period right after I woke up. I usually woke up and had a routine, had practice, I had my alarm set and had a long day ahead of me. Then suddenly I found myself waking up and I had nothing to do. Completely free. That for me was very strange and was very depressing,” said the 24-year-old.
“What helped me make this transition to padel was taking it one thing at a time. Doing things to the best of my ability, one day at a time. At some point, when I would look at the bigger picture, I didn’t have reasons to push or train. I’m banned from the sport I had been playing for 17 years, so why stress? Why train? There is nothing to train for.
“I was just a coach and for coaching you don’t need to be super fit, so I had every reason to be lazy and to chill. But I didn’t do that. Even when I was coaching, I tried to hit with my players to stay fit.
“I didn’t know that in two or three years I would be a professional padel player. I didn’t know anything. But I kept going, not because I’m special, not at all, but that was the only option in front of me. Either I give up and I turn off the engines completely, or I continue to train and try to push.”
A year ago, Hossam quit his coaching job to dedicate himself to being a professional padel player.
“I’m lucky I’m here today. I have an opportunity in front of me, I’m just starting out in a new career, I didn’t achieve anything. I’m not at the level of professional (padel) players and finally I have something to work for,” he said.
‘I’m willing to do everything right’
Hossam was Egypt’s most promising tennis prospect in decades and he admits he never fully acknowledged the talent he had nor the opportunities ahead of him.
“I took it for granted,” he confessed. “When things stopped and everything was taken away from me, I realized its value. That’s why now I’m not willing to take any risks, I’m not willing to make any mistakes. I’m working 100 percent focus and physically, it’s no joke.”
Hossam says he is more serious in everything he does now, and you can read it in his face.
“I feel like life got tough for me a bit. I lost my father last year. And I felt like now is the time to man up and take responsibility,” he added.
“I no longer have the luxury of, oh I lost, it’s no big deal. There are expenses, there are responsibilities. I’m 24 now, I’m not 17, 18 years old anymore, the rising star that has his whole life ahead of him. I have maybe 10 years left in my professional career, so I have to make the best out of it. Life got tough and this is a second chance. I’m not willing to miss any small chance. I’m willing to do everything right, God willing.”
Grave consequences
Hossam does not shy away from discussing the mistakes he made in the past. He says he has made peace with everything that happened and has no intention of burying his head in the sand.
He blames tough circumstances and lack of knowledge as the main reasons that drove him to fix matches and says at the time, he felt like he had no choice.
“Part of it, I was unfairly judged, part of it was wrongdoings from my end but I wasn’t aware I was doing anything wrong, and another part was me knowingly doing something wrong and thinking it would slide because I felt I was in difficult conditions, my dad was in a critical condition. To the best of my knowledge, the period of time where I made those mistakes, I felt like that was, not the only option, but the best I could do,” he explained.
“I didn’t criticize myself because I know I had no options, I had no one helping me. No one around me understood anything. No one knew what match-fixing meant, no one knew what it meant to be approached by someone before a match and that you have to report it. Report to who? And what does TIU (Tennis Integrity Unit) mean? The IPIN (International Player Identification Number) I use to sign up for tournaments which has all the policies and guidelines, my mom is the one who did it for me. There was lack of knowledge and lack of awareness to a huge extent.
“And ultimately you are being judged based on your knowledge of these policies, which is fair on their part, because I obviously signed on (to) these agreements, but to the best of my knowledge, I feel like I couldn’t do much better than I did.
“And if I go back in time and I’m in the same situation again, I probably would have done something similar to what I’ve done because I didn’t feel I had a better option.
“Of course if I had the mentality I have right now, I would have made better decisions and I would have handled it way better, but back then I didn’t understand anything.”
‘Nothing luxurious about it’
Hossam does not get into why he feels he was unfairly judged, but emphasized that his decision to fix matches was not to simply get richer, but to him was a matter of earning enough money to continue competing in tennis.
“I was in a camp and training and paying 1,000-ish euros per week so I could practice and compete at a high level,” he said.
“No one supported me except my dad. Until the day he died he was my only sponsor, I had no financial support. No one even wanted to help me, there was no intention for that.
“I was completely on my own. My dad got sick and went into the hospital, there were complications, I got depressed when my dad was hospitalized. My brother Karim was involved in this (match-fixing), we had choices in front of us and we took them. We didn’t have the luxury of having many choices.
“People think that when it comes to match-fixing that we did it because we wanted to make money illegally and to make money for the sake of making money. I wanted to get some money so I could train, I was desperate to make it, there was nothing luxurious about it.
“If there was a single entity supporting me, things could have gone differently. I had no idea these were the consequences when I did that.”
Hossam added that even when he sought guidance, the person he turned to had no idea what tennis’ anti-corruption program, or TACP, was.
“I once called a Davis Cup coach and was asking him something about the TACP, which is the book that has the rules of tennis’ anti-corruption program, and the Davis Cup coach was like, ‘What is the TACP?’ He didn’t even know what it was.
“This is supposed to be the most qualified coach in Egypt, he is a Davis Cup coach and should have awareness of all these things. That’s the level of knowledge we have here in Egypt.”
Focus on world championships
In the wake of the ban on the Hossam brothers — among others — the Egyptian Tennis Federation took action and held information sessions to educate young players and parents about the dangers of getting involved with those fixing matches.
Although he has yet to hear from the Court of Arbitration for Sport, or CAS, about his last appeal against his lifetime ban, Hossam has already moved on and vows to make the most out of his second chance.
He is currently in Dubai at the World Padel Championships after Egypt impressed in qualification by defeating Japan and Iran.
Egypt lost their opening Group D tie with France before defeating Qatar 2-1, with clashes against Paraguay and Mexico still to come.
“I think we deserved to qualify,” said Hossam.
“The world championship itself is a whole other story. There are countries you can’t really get near them, like Spain, Argentina, Brazil, France, Italy, countries that have been playing padel for many many years.
“So it’s unfair to us to compare ourselves to them, and it’s unfair to them to be compared to us. I have been playing padel for less than a year whereas they’ve been playing since they were kids.
“The experience will be the number one thing for us, to get exposure to these people, to compete against them, to have the pleasure of sharing a court with them. But there are some countries where we can try to go for the win.
“We’ll try to win as many matches as possible. It will be a great experience in a beautiful country like the UAE. It’ll be great hospitality and a world-class event, I’m looking forward to it.”
